Air India will introduce a FIFTH weekly service to Newark from July 4, marking a 50% increase in available seat miles on India-US routes in the last 8 months.

The new flight will operate on Fridays using Boeing 747-400 aircraft. The flights currently operate on Tuesdays, Thursdays, Saturdays and Sundays.

Newark flights have been an overwhelming success for Air India, as can be shown by this second increase in capacity after less than a year of operation.

Air India will now offer over 6500 weekly direct seats between India and the United States - more than all other carriers on the route combined. In addition to 5x weekly Newark EWR flights via Paris CDG, the carrier also operates daily services to New York JFK and 3x weekly services to Chicago ORD both via London LHR.

This increase will also make Air India the LARGEST CARRIER in the Newark to Paris market, a remarkable feat for a new entrant. Air India will now offer 2115 weekly seats compared to 1981 weekly seats offered by Continental and 1764 weekly seats offered by Air France.

I have a question regarding Air India. I noticed that they have a relatively small fleet of aircraft particularly 747. How does Air India (or other similarly sized carrier) compensate when one of their aircraft is in for a C-check or D-check? Do they reduce their schedule, lease an aircraft, utilize the other aircraft more?

I noticed that they have a relatively small fleet of aircraft particularly 747. How does Air India (or other similarly sized carrier) compensate when one of their aircraft is in for a C-check or D-check?

AI has 7 Boeing 747-400s in the active fleet right now, with an 8th to follow from Korean Air in the mid-term future. Each US rotation is just short of 48 hours, giving them a capacity of 3 weekly rotations each even with 24 hours of scheduled maintenance downtime. That leaves plenty of spare capacity for 15 weekly US rotations even with one aircraft down.

Does AI serve Paris from Mumbai or Delhi?

Paris is served nonstop from BOM with 744s. AI also codeshares on Air France flights from both BOM and DEL to Paris.

"This increase will also make Air India the LARGEST CARRIER in the Newark to Paris market, a remarkable feat for a new entrant. Air India will now offer 2115 weekly seats compared to 1981 weekly seats offered by Continental and 1764 weekly seats offered by Air France."

You're forgetting one thing here my friend, most of the passengers on the AI flight are not getting off in Paris, matter of fact, I'd be damned if AI actually sold the entire B747-400 from EWR with Paris bound passengers only, so in actuality, they are not offering the most weekly seats from EWR-CDG, because more than 3/4 of the passengers will never set foot out of the the airport at CDG.

most of the passengers on the AI flight are not getting off in Paris, matter of fact

Maybe so, but again most of the passengers on the CO flight did not originate at EWR either but rather at some point downline - and most of the passengers on the AF flight won't get off in Paris but rather connect to elsewhere in the system. Why is that any different from folks flying on to India?

The plan always was for EWR to go daily in the long term, but everyone is surprised at how well the flight is doing and just how soon this will become viable.

Is AI considering other points in the US like ATL or IAD? And the West Coast? AI has no services there at all except a codeshare with SQ.

Neither ATL or IAD are approved gateways under the bilateral. Also, AI serves both LAX and SFO under codeshares/blocked seats with SQ, MH and OZ. Finally, there are tentative plans to start LAX services through NRT and/or LHR if and when slots, authorities and planes become available.

as you've stated; AI has a plethora of unused rights into the USA via other countries.... but have they considered a nonstop to any of its current destinations, particularly in the event that a competitor launches a nonstop (similar to what UA almost did)?

have they considered a nonstop to any of its current destinations, particularly in the event that a competitor launches a nonstop

Air India has made it very clear that they will NOT be launching a nonstop except as a competitive response. United's planned ORD-DEL flight was a joke that no one at AI took seriously. I've posted in great technical detail on Flyertalk why that flight could never have been operated the way UAL wanted to run it and hence why it bit the dust once UAL actually decided to try and make money again. Meanwhile, neither Delta nor Northwest has expressed any intention to run India-US nonstop flights so things will likely remain this way ad infinitum.

B747-437B,
That doesn't sound more efficient to me! If 80% of the people are going to India on these flights, how could it be more efficient to stopover in Europe?

Does Air India really make that much money carrying cargo/pax from NYC to CDG/LHR? I would think that they would get more usage out of their airplanes if they didn't have a 2 hour layover in Europe in each direction.

Of course, I don't pretend to know much about this- so more details from anyone wuld be nice. If stopovers are efficient in this case, can you explain?

Yes I'm curious as well to know why you said that it's more efficient, and why it's the case. Surely, there is enough demand for both direct passenger & cargo flights between India & the USA, yet there are no direct flights between the two countries (or at least, not very many, as perhaps other airlines do India – US direct?) and without doubt, it’s more efficient to run the operation without any stops!! They’ve also been able to capture the lucrative traffic between the US & Europe (e.g. LHR-JFK-LHR).

Does it have anything to do with lack of aircraft? Maybe they don’t have enough aircraft to fly to both Europe & the US, so they combine the flights? But I find this scenario unlikely, as I don’t understand why it’s taken them so long to get the necessary aircraft (i.e. additional 747s or 777s).

I’m not really very informed on the Indian aviation industry (as both an Indian and an aviation enthusiast, I ought to get more up-to-date!) so maybe I have overlooked other factors that I’m not very knowledgeable on (such as the internal slowness of the airline's management, or political wrangling over aircraft orders?).

US-LHR traffic rights have to be one of AI's most valuable assets. They get to do something that NW, DL, US, and CO would love to do but cannot. So would BMI. There is serious money involved and AI would be dumb to pass LHR in either direction without a stop.

I noticed on a trip to India that AI extensively uses fifth-freedom rights on several of routes. It's a good gig. For instance, their flight from DEL-NRT stops in BKK. JAL flies the route non-stop. Flights to KIX were via HKG although AI has the equipment to fly it non-stop as well.

25 Hkg82
: Many airlines would love to do LHR-JFK-LHR. Singapore Airlines has been wanting to do LHR-JFK-LHR for years but the British Government has not given t

26 PW100
: Not sure what fellow member -437B posted on flyer talk. However the principle is that [ultra] long haul flights are in-efficient. Period. Let say you

27 United777
: Sean why was the proposed United Airlines ORD-DEL non-stop route a joke. If it wasnt for 9.11 I think the route would have been flying today. Same as

28 N79969
: PW100, Very good points. In the case of a PW-powered 744, the airline would have to buy the PIP for the engines for such a long route.

29 B747-437B
: why was the proposed United Airlines ORD-DEL non-stop route a joke This is a quote of what I posted on Flyertalk on August 15, 2001. Summer operations

30 United777
: Damm it. All I want is a non-stop flight from US to India.

31 N79969
: -437B, UA bought performance-improvement-packages (PIP) from Pratt for some of their 744s. Did your numbers incorporate that? The pilots killed the ro

32 ConcordeBoy
: How do Indian politics generally feel toward runway (and airport) expansion? My guess would be about as "well" as all others

33 Jaysit
: Just did the EWR-CDG-BOM route on Air India's Executive Class on VT-ESO (Khajuraho). There were only 7 of us on the upper deck of a 744 all the way to